Geoengineering Climate - Geoingeniería del Clima. Note: "academic arguments against research into GE have been erroneously premised on the possibility of future deployment when in truth this deployment already happened, even if unintended." OE 4/2013
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Sunday, April 7, 2013

Short cutting the cooling properties of the hydrological cycle

Geoengineering: Mucking with Earth systems for the worst.

Precipitation is part of earth's self regulating processes, where atmospheric water vapor (not only from direct solar exposure but from wind, ambiance heat and nighttime evaporation as well) is returned to the surface in liquid form (rain) or ice (snow or hail); this is called the hydrological cycle or water cycle.

The WHOLE of this complex process is how Earth cools itself!

Clouds play a big role in regulating earths temperature, thick fluffy clouds truly cool the planet by reflecting sunlight, while the existence of 'clear sky' gaps between them allow the 'escape' of trapped infrared heat; while thinner more uniform and expansive clouds warm the planet by allowing heat to reach the surface while trapping the outgoing long wave radiation (green house effect).

But that is not the end of the story... the processes of cloud formation and precipitation trough evaporation [1] and condensation [2] also play important roles by themselves in this regulating effect.

Temperature, moisture and the presence of condensation nuclei are
factors that lead to the formation of clouds and precipitation.

Rain occurs when condensation nuclei gather enough water droplets "with a fall velocity which exceeds the cloud updraft speed,
then it will fall out of the cloud as precipitation". [3]

Accidental or otherwise ocean and atmospheric geoengineering, throws Earth's self regulating system, perfected over thousands of years, further 'out of whack' by injecting 'nuclei' or fertilizing materials of the wrong kind or in the wrong proportions and in the wrong places.

Injecting cloud nuclei with the purpose of maintaining or enhancing the cloud cover means less rain,[4] which may in turn interact synergically with other lack of rain problems.[5]

There is no logical case for geoengineering as a last resort or plan b. At present geoengineering is not palliative medicine, is euthanasia; we should rather work on solutions for all of the living.. present and future.

The truth, the real real... real truth about geoengineering or climate engineering is that it's been in our past, it is present now an will be in our future, the only question is what will it's future history be.

The most terrifying thing about GE/climate Enggineering may not be the technology itself [6] but some of the other questions:

Who wields it?
With what purpose?
What level of competence and trustworthiness?
Is it part of master economic or military plans with entrepreneurial and geopolitical considerations first?
All so that fossil fuels remain as the preferred method of energy generation and consumption?

The prognosis is no good.

Note (added 3/26/14)
Perhaps it would be useful to note that we are already disturbing the hydrological cycle trough our emissios of CO2, but also very large but often ignored sulfur emissions. See my more recent blog entries:

"Human activities are releasing tiny particles (aerosols) into the
atmosphere. These human-made aerosols enhance scattering
and absorption of solar radiation. They also
produce brighter clouds that are less efficient at releasing
precipitation. These
in turn lead to large reductions in the amount
of solar irradiance reaching Earth's surface, a corresponding increase
in solar
heating of the atmosphere, changes in the
atmospheric temperature structure, suppression of rainfall' http://www.sciencemag.org/content/294/5549/2119.abstract

Water evaporated from trees cools global climate

Video from CarnegieInstitution:
(low cloudiness from evaporation)
Ken Caldeira: 2:15 "For each unit of energy that went into evaporating water, approximately 3/4 of a unit of energy of sunlight was reflected back to space"